I arrived in Istanbul after twenty-one consecutive sleepless hours either in airports or on airplanes. I then did what any sane person would do after being awake and uncomfortable for that many hours in a row. I immediately went out on the town in Istanbul with my brother and his friends and got drunk on my ass. I got back to my hotel about 2:30 in the morning. By this time I had been awake for God knows how many hours and was drooling, seeing-double drunk to boot. Soooooooo, the next morning/afternoon/night/whenever I got ambulatory again, I sat down at my computer to update my blog and let everyone know how things were going.
When I attempted to log in to my blog, I was rudely greeted by this, "Bu siteye erişim mahkeme kararıyla engellenmiştir" in bold, red letters. BIG, bold red letters. Turkish not being one of my stronger languages, I assumed it said something like, "Due to circumstances beyond our control you will not be blogging today you drunken sot". Well, as it turns out it was circumstances well within their control. In fact, it WAS their way of controlling things. After two days of being denied access in a foreign language and not understanding why, I copied and pasted the phrase into Google and this is how it translated: "This court decision blocked access to the site". Hmmmmmmmm. My momma didn't raise no dummies. I've seen "Midnight Express". I didn't want to risk upsetting the local gendarmerie by circumventing their little "court decision" (which I figured out how to do pretty quickly). So rather than risk seeing my next pair of female breasts through a plate glass window in the visitors area at the local lock-up, I decided that discretion was the better part of valor and vowed to update my blog, complete with stories and pictures, upon my return to the good ol' US of A.
So here 's my first entry: What an amazing, fascinating country. The people, the food, the history, the sights. I did not have one experience with anything or anyone that could be defined as even remotely negative. I spent the first five days in Istanbul, the sixth day I spent on a bus going to Izmir (nine hours to to the south) and the remainder of my time in Izmir. Depending on whom you ask in Turkey, the population of Istanbul is somewhere between 14- and 22-million people. I have to think the latter is closer to the truth. I've been to New York City many times. Istanbul is exponentially larger and more crowded. It is mind boggling in the truest sense of the words. On the ride down to Izmir I saw a countryside that is quite reminiscent of Southern California, and Izmir is a beautiful port city on the Aegean coast. I have enough pics and stories to keep me blogging for the next couple of weeks, give or take, so I hope you'll be following along. Some of you are facebook friends and you've seen a very small sampling of the pictures I took and read a little about what I did there. I have so much more to share.
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| Istanbul Exploration Party L to R: Mom, Brother Ralph, Cousin Cheryl, Ado |
Sorry for the delay. Talk to you soon.
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